As the 2025 awards season winds down, several trends have emerged. It’s been a great year for horror movies. More than a few would-be blockbusters absolutely flopped. The domestic box office is slowly creeping upward, thanks to the holidays, but it’s still underwhelming. And many of the usual suspects are popping up for individual filmmaker categories, but much like last year, a few new faces have made their mark as disruptors — The Secret Agent is one such Hollywood disruptor that deserves recognition!
Arriving from Brazil, The Secret Agent is a period drama and a political thriller that focuses on revolutionary politics. Set during 1977 during Carnival, this foreign film opens with a dead body lying in a gas station parking lot. What’s the story behind it? And within the next 15 minutes, we see roving packs of dogs, a two-headed cat and strange rumors of “The Hairy Leg.”
If you want to immediately grab my attention with an international film that speaks a foreign language from a critical darling during the awards season, you’ve already won the first battle. Now, how will you keep me actively watching for the next two and a half hours?
Multi-hyphenate filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho proceeds to sprinkle these sensational elements throughout the runtime, mostly focusing on corrupt officials hunting for communists, or at least people acting as government dissidents. It’s a dangerous time to fight the power, but for Marcelo (magnificently portrayed by Wagner Moura), it’s a necessary evil, as he’s risked his life returning home to Recife in order to reunite with his young son and hopefully live happily ever after. But life has a way of being much more complicated than fairy tales.
As Marcelo — now Armondo — reunites with his estranged family members and assumes a new identity while staying in touch with the local underground resistance, he soon learns the authorities are onto him and that two hitmen have been dispatched. How long will Marcelo stay one step ahead of his pursuers before his time finally runs out?
“Elza is the most important character in the story, now.”
As far as unique storylines go, The Secret Agent, for the most part, piqued my interest. Crooked cops, degenerates, death threats and “refugee groceries” did the deed, but I nearly lost my patience with the slow-burn murder coverups. Filho is as much to blame as he is celebrated, because the writer, director and producer throws in a lot of distractions as the main storyline bounces back and forth from two different timeframes and it focuses on too many elements that don’t exactly give “main character energy.”
As the film’s director, Filho deserves kudos for creativity, but as the only credited writer, he shouldn’t win too many accolades, since the screenplay really could have been tightened up and neither of its timelines really fully wrap up. The best thing about this film is its main actor, who deserves all the accolades he receives this year. Moura’s hunted man dealing with a haunted history is believable, bringing substance to his character’s life, even if he never truly receives a happy ending.
There are a few more takeaways of The Secret Agent that I felt were notable. Having never visited Brazil before, I can only assume this filmmaker is truthfully depicting the country back in ’77, but everyone seems to smoke and public sex might have been an epidemic, as well. But “The Hairy Leg” truly left me perplexed. I wasn’t sure if it was simply a figment of the characters’ imagination, comic relief or an actual supporting character, alive and kicking. Literally.
I’m officially celebrating Wagner Moura’s performance with a Music City Film Critics’ Association Award nomination for acting this year but with no hard conclusion, I can’t truthfully nominate The Secret Agent for best movie of the year, but it should receive recognition in the foreign film categories. I’ll definitely be watching filmmaker Filho’s future releases and I’m thankful for The Secret Agent disrupting the norm.
“Never mix friendship and work, OK?”